Friday Homestead Dispatch
Week Number Sixty-Eight
Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?
—The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
1.
I briefly mentioned the Supreme Court nullifying the last remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in last week’s Dispatch. This week we are seeing first hand the return of Jim Crow to the land of the free. As you most likely know, Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes, primarily in the Southern U.S. from 1877 to the mid-1960s, that enforced rigid racial segregation and legalized a caste system relegating African Americans to second-class citizenship.
As HCR reported last night, yesterday Tennessee state representative Justin Jones burned a Confederate battle flag in the rotunda of the Tennessee State Capitol in protest of the legislature’s redrawing of the state’s congressional district maps to erase the majority-Black 9th Congressional District. By cracking the city of Memphis into three pieces and joining them to white suburbs, the legislature turned all the state’s districts into Republican seats.
The actions of the Republicans in the Tennessee legislature are a direct response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which found that in creating a second congressional district to enable Black voters to elect a representative of their choice, as mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Louisiana legislature unconstitutionally took race into account when drawing the district lines. Although the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days to finalize an opinion, the Supreme Court made the decision effective immediately to allow Louisiana, where the primary election was already underway, to redraw its maps.
Republicans are on a roll to suppress the vote which is the only way to stay in control of the country. Just minutes after the Republicans cut Memphis into thirds to get rid of the voices of Black Democrats, Republican state senator Brent Taylor announced he was running for the new seat “to stand with President Trump and cement Tennessee’s conservative legacy for generations to come.”
And just this morning the NYTs reports that the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a measure allowing state Democrats to redraw congressional districts, dealing a significant blow to the party’s efforts to keep pace with Republicans in a nationwide redistricting battle.
The ruling wipes out four Democratic-leaning U.S. House seats in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterms with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out newly red districts across the country.
Jasmine Crockett wrote on Substack:
Exactly one week after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee decided to pass racist congressional maps eliminating the ONLY majority-Black district in the state — all to appease the rotting, deranged man in the Oval Office. What a damn shame.
Since Donald Trump took office, he has been laser-focused on suppressing Black voters. Let’s stop pretending this is about “fair maps” or “election integrity.” This is racism. Full stop. This is white supremacy operating exactly as it was designed to — minimizing Black voices, weakening Black political power, and silencing opposition from communities they do not want represented.
We are watching a coordinated attack on Black progress happen in real time. From attacks on voting rights, to attacks on DEI and affirmative action, to the removal of qualified Black leaders from positions they earned — the goal is the same: erase us, silence us, and strip us of power and opportunity without consequence.
Nothing about this is surprising or shocking, we’ve seen their playbook before — we saw it in Texas, we saw it in Louisiana, and now we are seeing it in Tennessee.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, beatings, firebombings, and lynchings – they were all tools of white supremacy designed to keep Black people politically powerless. Black people were murdered for trying to register to vote, for organizing their communities, and for demanding a seat at the table.
The Voting Rights Act was enacted because this country had already proven, over generations, that racism would always find a way to weaponize the law against Black people.
This should not be a partisan issue. No matter your party, every American should be able to agree that racism, voter suppression, and the deliberate silencing of Black communities have no place in our democracy.
But here is what they have yet to realize: Black people in this country have never stopped fighting for democracy. Racism will not stop or silence a people whose ancestors shed blood for the right to vote. They can try, but they will not win. We will not be moved.
And Lee Papa, who writes as the Rude Pundit, weighed in on the subject: So Louisiana, a state that is one-third Black and has six seats in the House of Representatives (see how math works?), will now redraw the map for November’s election to completely eliminate the two majority Black districts. The only way to do that is to carve up New Orleans, a city that is 55% Black, and the only reason you wouldn’t have a New Orleans district is to prevent a Black person (who will likely be a Democrat) from being elected. The same goes for Baton Rouge, another majority Black city. Rational division of the state would give its two most populous cities a district each. But Republicans aren’t looking to draw maps fairly. They are going to carve up those cities and Shreveport (third largest, also majority Black) and combine them with white suburbs and rural parishes and deliberately dilute the color out of them. And the Supreme Court will not call that “racist.”
This is the country the racists want, where we’re always scrambling to make shit more racist. And the racists are in charge, and they are aggrieved like toddlers who were just told they can’t have their fifth cookie. It’s never enough. You’d think the fact that all these white people got elected and run the courts and everything would prove that some kind of racism against whites isn’t actually real. But reality always fucks things up for them even as they fuck up reality.
All the more reason to hit the weekly protest at Pima and Swan (Juan Ciscomani’s office) in Tucson from 8-10am.
2.
I’m still baffled that *rump’s political career didn’t come to a screeching halt after January 6, 2021. On January 7th, 2021, I penned we may be at a crossroads right now after four years of unprecedented thievery and chicanery from all levels of our government, the puppet strings controlled by a man whose candidacy consisted of ethnic slurs, racist slanders, misogynist insults, instigating violence against Muslim Americans and Mexican Americans, a disdain for the Bill of Rights, and contempt for the poor, a philandering, failed casino magnate, a slum lord, a beauty pageant operator, a stiff artist who doesn’t pay his debts; a strutting braggart who claims to be a business genius, but who managed to lose nearly $1 billion in a year, keeps declaring bankruptcy, and refuses to release his tax returns; a man whose public persona is as crude and arrogant that I’ve ever seen or heard. And his most blatant and sexist remark, “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything,” seems to have had no consequences.
The crossroads, as it turned out, went to the right. I also wrote on that day that I am a registered Democrat, and the philosophy associated with that party most closely aligns with how I see that a society can best function. Your average American who votes Republican has bought into the longest-running economic con game in political history. Conservative’s use fear tactics (such as the world is dangerous, only our ‘leader’ can protect us from scary immigrants, that our Christianity is under attack by godless heathens) to induce poor and middle class people to vote against their economic self-interest and in favor of a wealthy elite that becomes wealthier by exploiting them.
Thom Hartmann wrote earlier this week that the acceptance of political violence, the rising racism, and the open misogyny we’re seeing across America aren’t a mystery but are the predictable result of 45 years of GOP policy that gutted the middle class and then sold white men the lie that women, Blacks, and immigrants were the ones to blame.
For half a century, Republicans have bled white working class men dry, hoovered up their wealth and given it to the Bezos’ and Zuckerbergs, and fought to keep the middle class from re-emerging in a way that might slightly dent corporate and billionaire profits.
And his post from this morning expands upon this theme that in 2023 alone, the transfer to the morbidly rich was $3.9 trillion, enough to give every working American a $32,000/year raise. Meanwhile, we’re still the only developed country on earth without a national health care system, our kids go into a lifetime of debt to attend college, our infrastructure is crumbling, and we’re falling further behind Europe and China every year on the clean-energy transition that climate science says we have maybe a decade to get right.
So they manufacture the rage, pay the influencers, bias the algorithms, fund the think tanks, bankroll rightwing podcasts, radio and TV, and then coordinate and pay for the talking points in private group chats.
They have to do it this way because if American working people ever stopped to add up what’s actually been done to them over the past forty-five years of the Reagan Revolution, the political landscape would shift overnight.
Yes, I’m repeating myself, but it needs to be digested by all Americans. Grab a fork!
3.
With all that said above, here’s more on Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran, who is leading the race against incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins. Check out Jon Stewart’s interview with him in the video below…worth every minute of your time.
The main gist of the interview is that corporations are the 4th branch of government…the system has been built to benefit corporations over ordinary people. We’ve been tricked into believing that power, or politics, is only for Special people rather than the average Joe or Jane. The government itself is the only entity that can actually reign in unfettered capitalism, of which most, if not all, safeguards have been dismantled for years by Republican legislation and more recently by Project 2025. The answer to bad government is not NO government. It’s oftentimes bad governance that benefits corporations over people. Good governance can be achieved but not by re-electing the same corporate bought politicians time after time. Does capital investment go towards making lives better or does it just further enrich the already wealthy?
Platner also mentions that Senate Bill 1506, Medicare For All, has already been introduced (in 2025) and it’s just festering waiting for people like Platner to get elected and push it through.
4.
One of Platner’s main objectives is to fight for the average worker. Check out this interesting video explanation of how capitalism is designed to mainly benefit the rich while keeping workers suppressed.
5.
And to expand on bills waiting for Dems/Progressives to take over Congress, here are some good ones waiting in the wings:
— Keep Your Pay Act: Senator Cory Booker’s proposed Keep Your Pay Act (introduced March 2026) aims to provide significant tax relief by making the first $75,000 of income tax-free for married couples filing jointly, with proportional relief for single filers. The plan doubles the standard deduction, expands the Child Tax Credit, and is designed to increase take-home pay for working families.
— The Money Agenda 250: This is interesting as I only recently heard about the organization called Patriotic Millionaires. The Money Agenda is a 2026 legislative platform from the Patriotic Millionaires—a group of high-net-worth individuals—designed to stabilize the US economy for the next 250 years. It proposes taxing the rich to fund tax cuts for working people, aiming to reduce wealth inequality and protect democracy. They endorse several up and coming candidates for office including Graham Platner.
— The Ultra-Millionaires Tax: Another bill designed to tax the rich, proposing an annual tax on the net worth of the wealthiest U.S. households, specifically a 2% tax on fortunes between $50 million and $1 billion and an additional 1% tax on wealth over $1 billion (3% total) to fund public investments. This one is sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representatives Brendan F. Boyle and Pramila Jayapal, and it’s been festering since 2021.
— The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act: This recent bill put forth by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott actually advanced in the Senate by a 89-10 vote. It’s a legislative package aimed at tackling the U.S. housing crisis by boosting supply, reducing regulatory barriers, and restricting large institutional investors.
— Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act: Another recent bill, this one introduced by Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Don Beyer, aims to eliminate or significantly reduce federal income taxes for middle- and low-income earners.
— Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act: Introduced in September 2025 by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Sen. Bernie Sanders, this bill aims to curb extreme income inequality by increasing corporate tax rates for companies that pay top executives more than 50 times the median salary of their workers. The proposal, addressing pay ratios where some CEOs make over 290 times more than average employees, could raise an estimated $150 billion over 10 years.
It’s past time to elect forward-thinking individuals into positions of power.
6.
Yellow Zoot sold, so go gotcha some panties! They will look great in your bathroom. Only two more Saturdays to view the exhibit at the Steinfeld Warehouse from 12-4pm.
7.
It was bittersweet when we had our dead Aleppo Pine removed on Thursday. It gave us shade for almost 20 years. And many hawks enjoyed the view from the top branches. C’est la vie.
8.
The last Dropped By Birds show until fall is this coming Tuesday at the Tucson Hop Shop from 6-8pm. Come out and enjoy some tasty pizza, thirst-quenching beverages, and our Polyethnic Sonoran Swing music.
And now…
Great post Gary, thanks!